tried to do his best but could not

i like the zoom in of the city cause you can really see how abstracted his painting technique was. there's no rendered detail and
it just dissolves into shapes and colours. he was so ahead of his time in so many ways.

the impressionists - and van gogh - recognised him as approaching colour and the application of paint the same way they were - 200 years
before them.

That was funny, but I thought they missed an opportunity there. Imagine if they'd run the whole five minute film. No one would have talked about anything else for a week. "What the fuck was that?!"

Forget the next week, they'd probably talk about it every year for the next 20 years. They only recently shut up about that fucking Apple "1984" commercial, and that wasn't even interesting.

Anyway, then I looked up the cost of 30 seconds during the halftime show and saw that showing the whole thing would have cost Burger King 52 million dollars, so I suppose I can understand why they wouldn't do that.

esart.com

vermeer's a "technician?" you don't think he expressed anything beyond craft in his stuff?..
van gogh had to be a master craftsman - i.e technician - in order to express himself so directly.
he worked his ass off for years to develop the skill to directly express himself in his great later stuff.

Not to butt in, but I think this is like comparing apples to broccoli. Or unicorns to donkeys? (If you very much prefer one over the other.) I wouldn't call either "technicians" though. They are both from different centuries, first of all. Art meant entirely different things in those contexts--again, all about context. Was Vermeer taking the same risks in the 1600s, that Van Gogh did in the 1800s? Maybe it can be looked at in that way, instead of comparing the work itself, which is so vastly different it's not even in the same stadium...

tried to do his best but could not

yeah you gotta see it. really interesting guy and his idea and practical application of it is pretty astounding. whether he's right
or not.

all artists are technicians. technique has to be mastered - become a non-concious element - if you want be able to express something
without (technical) restrictions.

i reacted to roni's comment cause it read like he was dismissing vermeer as a technician and craftsman while glorifying van gogh.

van gogh is one of my faves so it's not cause i don't appreciate his shit. his comment - in letter below - about "local colour" is what i meant when i said van gogh and the impressionists recognised in vermeer a kindred spirit in terms of not being interested in local colour in their work. and that was rare (or nonexistent) in painters of his era.

i just found this excerpt from a letter from van gogh to his brother -

"I would like to tell you a lot more about what Chardin, in particular, makes me think about colour — and — not making things the local colour. I think it’s splendid: ‘How to surprise — how to define the substance of this toothless mouth with its infinite subtleties. It’s made with nothing more than a few streaks of yellow and a few sweeping strokes of blue!!!’ When I read this, I thought of – Vermeer of Delft. When one sees it from close to, the townscape in The Hague is incredible, and done with completely different colours from what one would suppose a few steps away. "

edit - just found this in another van gogh letter -

"What I’m saying in this letter amounts to this — let’s try to get the hang of the secrets of technique so well that people are taken in and swear by all that’s holy that we have no technique."

esart.com

yeah you gotta see it. really interesting guy and his idea and practical application of it is pretty astounding. whether he's right
or not.

all artists are technicians. technique has to be mastered - become a non-concious element - if you want be able to express something
without (technical) restrictions.[..]

edit - just found this in another van gogh letter - "What I’m saying in this letter amounts to this — let’s try to get the hang of the secrets of technique so well that people are taken in and swear by all that’s holy that we have no technique."

This is something I hear/run into a lot: Master technique, or the rules in order to break them. I mean, in a nutshell, that's what I hear and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I am not sure one has to master everything about the entire practice of painting across the board. What if an artist had to master art in all forms? Or all genres, or all styles... I mean how vast and how limited does it need to be, and who is the authority? Not to say one should purposely stay stupid. I believe one should always stay a student until you're dead. But what makes a "Master" anyway?

I think you find your voice, your niche, and try to evolve within that through technique and expression. Why waste time with a bunch of shit you have no interest in unless you need for specific purposes. Realism may not be the most important element of a work. Total abstract expressionism may not be either, as I've seen in lots and lots of really bad art (subjective opinion, of course). Depends on what is trying to communicate or throw up onto the canvas I guess.

Sometimes I am inclined to compare a painting with a chess position. Or a chess problem. Even though the latter has to be solved to unfold its beauty and deepness.
Last month I participated in a team competition in Denmark. The walls of the building we played in were hung with works by Danish artists. Especially a painting in the hallway drew my attention and I ended up switching between the chessboard and the painting. I won easily that day.